Bureaucracy and Conformist Culture. Case Study: Quality Assurance in Higher Education
Year: 2013
Type: preprint
Abstract: Universities can be easily seen as professional bureaucracies. Quality assurance in education relates to enhancement of internal organizational process in order to improve the quality of programs provided by universities. The Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ARACIS) has powers in the field of quality assurance, including quality external evaluation of programs provided by higher education institutions, as well as drawing up standards and performance indicators. Quality assurance is rather a ceremony, a ritual involving the same practices, legally abided, within every organisation providing higher education programs. Solutions to such problem might be reducing bureaucracy, relativisation of the standards in order to claim and internalise some general principles and values. Hereby, the principles and objectives of education and research turn into standards, avoiding at the same time the reification of procedures and rules.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Mihai Păunescu
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2279478573